Eshgh-e-Baha

I, Aghdas Towfiq (Fakhri Toosky ), was born in 1934 ( 1313 in the Persian calendar ) in Tehran, into a Bahá'i family. My father, the late Enayatollah Khan Fakhri Toosky, was the son of Abolqasem Khan Yazdi; and my mother, Nimtaj Khanom, was the daughter of Hossein Khan and the maternal granddaughter of Shahbaz Khan Malayeri. Both my parents were steadfast believers during the time of Bahá'u'lláh and Abdu'l-Bahá. Because of their support for the believers of their region and their services in the Cause, each was honored with receiving Tablets from the Sacred Presence. Our family, in obedience to the command of the beloved Guardian of the Cause of God regarding migration (as part of the Forty-Five Month Plan for Pioneering), moved to an area near Malayer. In that rural place, there were no facilities for education. With full knowledge and in accordance with the Bahá'i teachings on literacy and learning, my father encouraged the villagers to become educated. Through his efforts, a place was selected to serve as a schoolroom, and an educated person was found to teach all the village children to read and write. I began my own education at the age of eight. After completing primary school and the first year of high school, I was married to Norollah Towfiq. The fruit of our marriage was five children — three sons and two daughters—twelve grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren. As of this date, my children and their families, all with higher education, are engaged in serving the Cause of the Blessed Beauty and their local communities in various parts of the world. From the very beginning of our marriage, with mutual understanding and cooperation, my husband and I continued the methods of teaching and social outreach that I had learned in my father's home since childhood. We established deeping classes in our own home, held gatherings for women, and on Fridays organized Baha'i Children and youth classes for the children of the area. Out of my deep love for children, I personally undertook the teaching of these Baha'i classes — something sacred and full of joy for me. For many years, was also honored to serve as a member of the Baha'i Education Committee. At all times, we devoted ourselves entirely to the service of the Cause. In the afternoons, after finishing my household duties, I would study. Since I had no opportunity to continue my formal education, I pursued learning at home with perseverance. I always had a great love for Persian literature and poetry, largely because my father, in the evenings, would read from the Baha'i writings and sometimes the poetry of Rumi and Hafez, planting seeds of love in my heart. I would memorize much of what I heard, and when I recited a verse from memory, I would be encouraged - these encouragements deepened my attraction to literature and inspired me to learn more about poetry. At first, I was more inclined to read and listen rather than to write poetry myself. But after being separated from my homeland, I began, from time to time, to express my sorrows and the hardships of life on paper. This gradually led to this collection of my poems.